By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

Published: August 29, 1993

PERHAPS the character of shantytowns, and the homeless who occupy them, change little over generations. But the episode of the encampment at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, demolished by the city on Aug. 17, recalls the "Hooverville" of shacks housing more than a score of homeless people in the emptied Central Park Reservoir in 1931-1933.

The stock-market crash of October 1929 occurred just as the large rectangular reservoir in Central Park north of Belvedere Castle was being taken out of service. In early 1930, the reservoir was drained, preparatory to its transformation into what is now known as the Great Lawn. But a slowdown in construction and excavation made clean fill scarce.

According to "The Park and the People: A History of Central Park" by Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar (Cornell University Press, 1992), by late 1930 a few homeless people had set up an informal camp at the reservoir site, but were evicted by the police.

As the Depression set in, public sentiment became more sympathetic. In July 1931 a judge suspended the sentences of 22 unemployed men sleeping in Central Park -- apparently in various locations -- and gave each one $2 out of his own pocket.

In November the Municipal Lodging House set a record in sheltering 3,853 men in one night. Other accounts indicate that the homeless colony had again established itself in the empty reservoir, and in December a New York Times reporter described six shacks, one with a stove, housing nine men.

"We work hard to keep it clean, because that is important," said one man. "I never lived like this before." The next day seven of the men were arrested as vagrants, but the charges were dismissed.

In September 1932, 29 men were arrested "with apologies and good feelings on both sides" in what the Parks Department itself described as "Hoover Valley." At the time, there were 17 shacks along "Depression Street," all with chairs and beds and some with carpets. One was even built of brick with a roof of inlaid tile by umemployed bricklayers who called it "Rockside Inn."

"They repair in the morning to comfort stations to shave and make themselves look presentable and keep their shacks as clean as they can," reported The Times. A health official said that "unless the city should see fit to install running water and sewerage facilities, the camp will have to go."

But it was still open Oct. 3, when Patrick McDermott, an unemployed bricklayer, was given six months in jail for dancing and singing along the top of the reservoir wearing "less clothing than deemed proper." He earlier reported that he had collected $47 from 3,000 visitors who had come to see the shantytown.

"The Park and the People: A History of Central Park" says there were 1.2 million Americans homeless in the winter of 1932-1933; 2,000 of these were New Yorkers who managed as best they could on the street. Ted Houghton, a spokesman for the Coalition for the Homeless, says 25,000 people a night are now in similar circumstances.

The reservoir settlement could not have been popular with the tenants of the new Fifth Avenue and Central Park West apartments, but they mounted no protest. There were other such settlements in New York -- one with 80 shacks between Ninth and 10th Streets on the East River. But the Central Park shantytown was the most famous. It disappeared sometime before April 1933 when work on the reservoir landfill resumed.

The issues raised in the the 30's are like many replayed in our own time. Millions were raised privately in relief funds, and there was great sympathy for those without homes and jobs. But this was tempered with concern that perhaps they were just "hoboes" -- a term describing vagrants.

THE shantytowns simultaneously attracted admiration and censure: people admired the resourcefulness of the individual inhabitants and the extent of their efforts and yet were threatened by the implicit disorder of such colonies.

Government could seem benign but also cruel. When the East River colony was cleared in 1933 (with 10 days' notice) "old John Cahill" told a reporter: "Nobody's askin' us where we're goin'. There's not a soul thinkin' about us."

Then, as now, there were many homeless people who refused to accept the officially sanctioned help. When their camps were broken up, they moved peacefully on, with only mild protest and certainly no revolt. And in the end, as everyone else seemed to hope, they just sort of disappeared.

Photo: Shantytown in empty Central Park reservoir, now the Great Lawn, in 1932. (Culver Pictures)